Yvette Guilbert was one of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s favorite subjects. With her tall, lanky physique and unconventional voice, she was unique among Montmartre’s café-concert and cabaret performers. She wore long black gloves and dresses with plunging necklines that emphasized her gaunt form, a characteristic that Toulouse-Lautrec seized upon in his numerous images of the singer. Here he captures her singing La Glu, a lurid song about a man and his mistress. It was precisely the contrast between Guilbert’s girlish, seemingly innocent appearance and the shocking, often raunchy lyrics of her songs that made her one of Montmartre’s biggest stars.

Excerpt from

Nicole Myers, DMA label copy, 2017.

• Driehaus Museum, Chicago
  Read more about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec from this article, Tragedy & Brilliance: The Life of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

• Museum of Modern Art, New York
  Learn more about the life and work of Toulouse-Lautrec from MOMA.

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
  Read a biography of Toulouse-Lautrec from the Met.

• Musee d'Orsay, Paris
  Check out this photograph of Yvette Guilbert at the Musee d'Orsay.

• Harvard Art Museums
  See several other prints of Yvette Guilbert by Tolouse-Lautrec.

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
  Learn more about fin de siecle Paris in the essay The Lure of Montmartre, 1880-1900 from the Met.